1. Technical Field
The present invention generally relates to printing apparatuses.
2. Background Art
In printing apparatuses that use ink cartridges (printing material containers) that are mounted in a removable manner, it is necessary to detect whether the ink cartridges are mounted or not, in order to prevent that a printing process is carried out while any of the ink cartridges is not mounted.
With regard to this issue, for example, JP-A-2002-14870 describes a technique of detecting whether an ink cartridge is mounted or not through the presence of electrical conduction between a terminal on the printer apparatus side and a terminal on the ink cartridge side. Moreover, JP-A-3-284953 describes a technique of simultaneously detecting a remaining ink amount and detecting whether an ink cartridge is mounted or not. However, these techniques entail problems in that ink cartridges that are not mounted cannot be identified, and the power consumption becomes large.